Natural sound source.
A quite different view of the beginnings of language is based on the concept of natural sounds. The
basic idea is that primitive words could have been imitations of the natural sounds which early men and
women heard around them.
The fact that all modern languages have some words with pronunciations that seem to echo .Naturally
occurringsoundscould beusedto support this theory. In English, in addition, to cuckoo, we have splash,
bang, boom, rattle, buzz, hiss, screech, and forms such as,bow-wow. In fact, this type of view has been
called the “bow-wow theory” of language
origin. Words that sound similar to the noises they describe are examples of onomatopeia.